In the nuclear industry, the need to remotely handle radioactive substances placed in confinement cells has led manufacturers to develop a large number of remote handling devices. These remote handling devices are generally classed into two families constituted by precision remote handlers and heavy handlers.
The family of precision remote handlers includes all those remote handlers including a master arm situated outside the confinement cell and a slave arm situated at a fixed point inside the cell and reproducing the movements of the master arm. Master/slave remote handlers with or without force return belong to this category.
On the other hand, heavy remote handlers are autonomous machines which include a vertical telescopic support column projecting towards the bottom from a carriage suitable for moving along two horizontal directions perpendicular to each other, this support column bearing at its lower extremity at least one gripping arm provided with pliers and generally formed of at least two segments articulated to each other.
Heavy remote handlers are specialized complex costly machines. In addition, the designers of these machines often provide them with a relative precision which frequently is ill-suited to relatively simple tasks generally to be carried out inside confinement cells, said tasks being, for example, the gripping of an object and transferring it from one point to another inside the cell.
The highly specialized nature of heavy remote handlers, their high cost and their large spatial requirement inhibits possible users from deciding to install such a remote handler in a confinement cell.